


The Beauty in A Crow's Caw

by Solrosfalt



Category: Fire Emblem: Shin Monshou no Nazo | Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem
Genre: ArchaneaWeek2018, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Children In Danger, Gen, Gladiators, Hi I'm Sol and I think about Archanea like all the time, Kidnapping, Mild Gore, Slavery, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 12:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15662943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solrosfalt/pseuds/Solrosfalt
Summary: To most people, Ogma is an intimidating giant, born for mercenary work.It's fine, Ogma doesn't try to disprove it much. There's no need to prove anyone wrong, when he himself barely remembers who and what he used to be.





	The Beauty in A Crow's Caw

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Swedish saying “Det sköna i kråksången”, quite literally translated to "The beautiful part of a Crow-Song", It's used to point out a silver lining in the midst of something terrible. Fun facts, and whatnot.
> 
> For ArchaneaWeek2018. Prompt: “Veteran”
> 
> Also, to differentiate between past and present I take some liberties with bolding and cursive. Just trying something new.  
> So anyway, here’s my take on Ogma.

_There’s always some beauty in a crow’s caws_ , Ogma’s mother used to say. Of course, that was before their door was kicked in the first time, before well-dressed men with desperate eyes pulled Ogma’s father from the dinner table and lopped his head off in the swine-yard.

Ogma was an obedient boy. His mother took him by the hand, and told him to stay in his chair, and so he did. He noticed his mother’s pale face, he heard the struggle and screams from his father, but he stayed.

He was six years old at the time, and he didn’t quite understand what death was. Though he soon learned. His mother ran out of the house when the men were gone, and didn't come back for a long time. Ogma fell asleep in his chair. When morning came, his mother returned from a long night of digging a grave, but his father wasn’t coming back.

Ogma was led to the grave, and they sat down by the lumpy, fresh square of earth. Crows hopped in the trees, and let out their hoarse, crude sounds.

Ogma’s mother put her arm over her son’s shoulders. “ _There’s always something beautiful within the crow’s song_ ” _,_ she said. “ _Even if it’s difficult to hear_.”

Ogma leaned against his mother, and nodded. “ _What is the beauty now, mama?_ ”

He asked that, because his mother had all answers. She always knew what to do, and she never lost hope. And Ogma was just a child who didn’t understand why this unending source of strength knowledge began to cry so suddenly, and so violently.

That was when he learned about the finality of some things. He remained confused, his growing mind tried to piece together the puzzle of life, at first with too little experience of death, and then, too much.

A mind took what it was fed and turned it into a reality.

And Ogma’s mind was fed with lives cut short by his blade.

 

Though there had been a time _before_ , a time future Ogma would forget. He didn’t grow from a simple farmhand into a swordsman and a murderer overnight.

No, before then, he was a child; living on the lawless Pyrathi Islands. He was without a father, sure, but if anyone had asked him how life was, he’d respond ‘ _just fine_ ’ on any day. Pyrathi was a decent place to live, not that a child would know very much about his options – there were villages spread out on the islands no great kingdom ever bothered to claim, a silent community where order was agreed upon but never reinforced. Pyrathi was the place for traitors, for turncoats, for failed assassins and thieves; their one common ground was the gallows they wanted to avoid. Many of these criminals brought their sweethearts or their families, and they begun their life anew on the harsh soil on one of the Pyrathian islands. Ogma knew his father was a traitor, as he’d been told over dinner a few times. It made him curious, but if he asked about it he got answers a child couldn’t understand.

“ _Of course you’d ask that, you’re a smart kid_ ”, his father once grinned. “ _I’ll tell you all about it when you’re older, but settle with this now, will you? You’ve got noble blood in you, son. Albeit not very popular blood, not since I… leaked some SENSITIVE information out of the court. Don’t go bragging about me, if you’re ever in good old Archanea. A tip from your old man. I don’t want you to go get hurt because of me._ ”

Ogma didn’t know what ‘ _sensitive information_ ’ meant, but it sounded important; it was why his father had died, after all.

But the crows cawed, and Ogma didn’t think it was all that awful. He had a life, father or not. He tended to the pigs that had been his father’s pride, and it was like spending time with him, in a roundabout way. He was far from alone. He went to the small village’s marketplace to collect beetroots for his tired mother, and in the evenings she taught him to read the written word and to be familiar with the laws of both Grust and Archanea.

To Ogma’s six-year-old self, Grust seemed a terribly strict place – he preferred the more gracious kingdom that had been his father’s home. Gracious, only in theory. Such a title required the naïve conclusion that everyone in such a large kingdom followed the laws set in place for them.

_Slavery is never permitted, and never pardoned._

Who was going to tell them, the Archanean Pirates who swept along the coast and raided people and belongings alike?

Who was going to tell them, as they grabbed an eleven-year-old boy by the collar, and slaughtered his mother for trying to defend him?

Who was going to tell them, as they set out to sea with the boy in chains, stored beneath the crewmen’s quarters with a bunch of other children, some many times his junior?

Not Ogma, that was for certain.

“ _This isn’t permitted_ ”, his foolish, eleven-year-old self had breathed into the face of the pirate that had him cornered. His mother’s body was growing cold beside him, and he was too deep in shock to understand just how much danger he was in.

“ _Sure, innit_ ”, the pirate had grinned before he hoisted him off the ground, and grabbed the pork stew off the table as he went.

Neither of Ogma’s parents had had the chance to have their dinner before they died. Did they go hungry into the afterlife?

 

It was an odd thought to have in the cargo hold of a ship, where pigs squeaked and starved only a few arms lengths away from him. There were plenty of other thoughts to have, but his mind fixated on what was possible for him to understand – however little that was.

These pirates seemed to enjoy the sport of killing said pigs; Ogma thought it would make more sense to slaughter them all and dry their meat if it was food they wanted, but he wouldn’t suggest that. Ogma was an obedient boy, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t wish for all of his kidnappers to starve to death. But to his dismay, they were well fed. Did they truly keep the animals just to slay them, one every other night?

He tried to puzzle it all together. He could hear them, where he huddled in the corner; he could hear the thuds of feet stomping on the deck above, the drunken cheers and the terrifying screams of a pig in pain. Even a hungry eleven-year-old could deduce something out of that, and he was quietly glad that it was the pigs and not him or any of the other chained children on that deck.

He was quietly glad that he wasn’t the one closest to the remaining pigs, either; that place was taken by an unfortunate girl who lost a lot of her hair and gained a lot of bruises from the terror of their teeth.

Was that the beauty in the crow’s caws this time – that Ogma did not have to spend a week-long passage bitten and bruised, only hungry and scared?

Or was it that when this crow sang, there was no beauty at all? His mother said there _always_ was. _Even if it’s difficult to hear_.

This time, maybe it was _too_ difficult. What positives existed when the pigs screamed, and his chains chafed at his skin? The two children beside him were both younger than him, and looked to him for any kind of reason in the way one's fate changed – but he couldn’t find it.

All he wanted was for this cursed crow to shut up. Eleven-year-old Ogma was already tired of its song, and so would twelve-year-old Ogma be, and every other Ogma thereafter.

But the caws never stopped.

 

Ogma didn’t quite remember the experience of being _sold_ , the last thing he remembered was the _thump_ of the ship hitting dock, and the silent cries of the boy beside him.

Ogma had laid his arms around the boy. The chains around his wrist had rattled, weighed them both down. It was a lousy embrace, but it was a lousy boat and a lousy life, so it was only fitting.

“ _Samto, hush_ ”, Ogma had said, and leaned his cheek against his head.

Samto only cried further.

 

And of all the things Ogma wished to forget, he had been blessed by the Divines to never be able to recall the prodding and the dehumanizing display on a dimly lit slavers market. Samto had retold his own experiences, and Ogma could nod along and think ‘ _yes that was probably how it happened_ ’, but he couldn’t remember the feeling at all. He’d been gone, his mind dug so far into despair it shut down any pathway to remembrance.

If it truly was the Divines taking mercy on him, they had a funny way to go about it. Not that Ogma ever found anything ‘ _funny_ ’. What was there to find joy in, when the dark side of Archanea was unveiled to him?

Eleven-year-old Ogma asked himself, with tears in his eyes, why the large market of Knorda had gladiator fights in full display, and why was there so little investigation in whether the fighters were there by their own free will?

 _Because_ , fifteen-year-old Ogma later realized, if they did, they would run out of gladiator-fodder too quickly.

Fodder that he, far from the pig-herding boy he’d been, would maim or slaughter. He wasn’t sure how he’d survived past his own years as mere fodder, only to become one of the stars of the dark, bloody show the audience enjoyed. Perhaps from being underestimated, at first. After that, it was a matter of staying alive through force, and the ability to look a tear-streaked face in the eyes without remorse. Ogma found the sword out of necessity and his body found a home in the art of wielding it, but that didn’t mean he didn’t hate every moment of cold clarity as he saw the desperate, wide eyes of his opponent when they realized they were losing. All of them strugglers in a conflict that they detested and feared, strugglers who wanted someone to punish, someone to blame – someone to kill just so that they could live _just one more time please by the gods_ —

 

Fifteen-year-old Ogma had forgotten what it meant to have freedom.

But sixteen-year-old Ogma remembered. He saw a pair of siblings run around the hidden market late one evening – and instead of worrying over how they’d gotten there, his mind jumped on the sudden memory that ‘ _this was you, once’_.

He remembered the obedient boy on one of Pyrathi’s islands, and saw the disgusting truth of the obedient man he’d become. He brought the Masters riches and fame, but gained none for himself. They’d grow rich even after the day he died, but his corpse would be thrown in the gutter. Why bother with a grave? No one would remember Ogma the gladiator that had given the town of Knorda nothing but blood.

 And that made him furious. The children disappeared from his view, but remained with the memory of himself. He had a will of his own, and in the heated mind of a sixteen-year-old boy, he wanted to prove it. A lifetime’s worth of disobedience in one, fell swoop.

 

Sixteen-year-old Ogma was a fool, and not bright enough to compose a plan. But he was the best on the arena, and that earned him the respect of his peers. The only few who survived facing him were the ones who knew when to surrender. They listened.

“ _You aren’t talking much_ ”, Samto said as he chewed on his bread stuffed with dried meat. He smacked loudly, as he always did – but to Ogma such a sound wasn’t annoying, it only meant that the two of them had survived yet another day.

He gave a small grunt in response, and tore his bread in half. He was hungry, but he was too busy to eat. He was thinking outside of the box that had kept him alive, and that required his full focus. He placed his eyes on Samto, the fifteen-year-old boy that he had unintentionally promised to keep alive. The same as the ten-year-old boy he’d held in his arms as a pirate ship hit dock.

This was not the life meant for any of them.

“ _I want to run_ ”, Ogma said.

\---

**Sometimes, when the free, breathing Ogma sat around yet another campfire, that very specific memory would burn like the flames before him. Even as the thousands of people around him buzzed and moved about, he would still feel like he was alone with his thoughts.**

**The Masters had been excellently skilled in creating that kind of isolation. Skilled enough so that Ogma could feel their breath down his neck, even now. It was a wonder that Ogma still had found his kin among the other gladiators. The Masters planted seeds of distrust where they could, since companionship among the slaves was a dangerous thing; both for their purses and their lives.**

**It was amazing, really. His heart pumped bile and his nose stuffed with harsh wool every time his mind was reminded of the Masters, the memory of pure, rabid fear was fresh as if a near decade was no time at all. Time did have mercy, since such reminders came far more in between, even though he still lived and breathed war. Even though he still had a master, of sorts.**

**This evening was one of the worse ones. Samto had joined the League just the day before.**

**He sat there beside Ogma now, his loud smacking as he chewed ever-present; until Barst or Cord would shove him and tell him to ‘ _shuddap_ ’. Ogma still didn’t mind the noise, he was too busy trying to push his ghosts away and stay in the moment, the moment of freedom, the moment of fighting for hope—**

**It was a useless struggle. Bits and pieces of their flight away from captivity always managed to slip past, like droplets of cold water on Ogma’s forehead.**

\---

 _“We aren’t gonna make it!”_ the pig-girl hissed. Her name was Lunvor, and that was something she’d knocked into both Ogma’s and Samto’s heads only weeks after all three of them had been sold to the arena. They were sparring, and Samto said something along the lines of ‘ _oi, pig-girl!_ ’ – and she’d knocked him out cold with the blunt edge of a sword. She’d been a scrawny girl then, but now she was a large, fearsome woman – she said it was because her grandmother was Macedonan, but whether or not Macedonans were taller than most remained for Ogma to be proven. Regardless, Ogma hadn’t ever caller her Pig Girl again, not to her face. But first impressions matter. The name remained in his mind.

Though, when said large, fearsome woman insisted that their hope of escape was lost, then maybe it truly was.

 _“Leave me behind”,_ Alfor snarled, while leaning on Samto. He’d lost his foot in a bloody fight one year ago, but still managed to stay alive on the arena’s soil. He was slowing them down, but he was a force to be reckoned with, and the love of Samto’s life.

 _“Like hell we will!”_ Samto almost shouted _.”We’ll fight them, right Ogma?”_

Dawn was breaking over Knorda, and the masters had no doubt alerted half the soldier force to find these ‘ _deserters’_. That was a fight he could not win, not even with all of them together. They had no weapons – what masters would be such fools as to arm their prisoners, trained to fight?

 _“You go”,_ Ogma said. _“I will disarm them and turn the fight to them. I’ll catch up! Go!”_

Ogma had never thought of himself as a compassionate person, but he felt relief when his friends obeyed him, and abandoned him. Another one of the Divine’s blessings – to make him not regret staying.

He had meant what he said about fighting. He’d genuinely believed he’d be able to punch the Masters in the face and kick them as they lay crumpled; but when they reached him, when their voices sounded and their whips crackled, he was an eleven-year-old boy again, cowering under their might.

Ogma’s obedience had kept him alive, and his body refused to turn from the path it knew.

He was even too obedient to hold his arms up to defend himself; he merely stood frozen in the middle of the near-empty street. There was a carriage, a few peasants who stared at him, soldiers who ran in to block his path from behind, and the Masters with their whips and knives moving unusually quickly on their feet—

When dealing out punishment, the rich men hated getting their hands dirty; and if they had to, they were usually careful not to damage their treasures too much.

Ogma had been hit on his shins and gotten a lash on his back, but this time the whips clawed at his skin like thousands of hooks. Hooks in his arms, over his throat, his face, his back; his body couldn’t keep the life in him.  

 _Disobedience brings death._ He’d die, he’d die torn asunder from head to feet. He wept blood onto Knorda’s cobblestones; lay on the ground huddled with the bleeding, meaty mess that was his arms over his face.

He was slowing the Masters down. But he couldn’t think about that.

This would allow his companions a chance to escape. But he couldn’t think about that.

He was a warrior; he was very much able to roll away from the lashes and break the Master’s kneecaps. But he couldn’t think about that.

All he knew was pain, pain, pain—

_“What are you DOING? Stop!! STOP!! Ah—”_

 

The only way for Ogma to know that the lashes had ceased was because the snapping sounds had stopped, his body hurt, it hurt so much, what did another lash matter? They should just finish the job and let him bleed out, feed the streets of Knorda what it had been so hungry for…

_“He didn’t do you anything! It is unacceptable and I—“_

_“Shut up, lass, or we’ll skin you too!”_

_“What did you say to my daughter, you cur?”_

Ogma tried to breathe. His arms, his pathetic display of defense, fell to the ground. He kept his eyes closed. The lashes would come again, he knew they would.

_“Oi! What is the meaning of this!?”_

_“Stay back, soldier! This foul dog struck my daughter!”_

_“Seems like the daughter did a fine job in getting herself struck, SIRE.”_

_“Insolence! Put that man in chains, or be personally responsible for an end to the Archanean and Talysan alliance! This I swear – or I would not be King Mostyn of Talys!”_

_“Ah— Your royal majesty— Hey, you! Bring the Master to the Emperor’s Justice!”_

Ogma barely registered the words spoken in the commotion around him; it was not about him. The only thing that truly, truly was about him was the pain, and the lashes. He breathed heavily, waited, waited.

_“Father! Fetch a healer, please!”_

There was kindness in a voice near him, even though he didn’t understand the words. That kindness left him with doubt; he would, perhaps, not die this day.

Why not?

He was in too much sickening pain to be ‘ _curious_ ’, but that question still remained; the Divines blessing granting him one, small clarity. Enough to wonder, enough to draw another breath.

 

Ogma opened his eyes.

Crouched above and beside him was a child. She was not more than eleven years of age, with hair like the clear blue ocean around his childhood home. She had kept it in a braid, like a crown around her head, but it was sticking out in all directions, still. She kept a hand over her collarbone, where the fine line of a whip had left its mark. She seemed shocked, and perhaps she regretted her decision to interfere as she’d come to know the pain herself – or perhaps knowing the pain only did the opposite for her.

Her frown was hard, not that of a meager child’s impulsive behavior. Ogma recognized it immediately; this girl was brave.

Brave like no other.

 _“Ma’am”,_ Ogma wheezed, his mouth tasted of metal _. “Your Highness. I… I pledge.”_

He wasn’t thinking straight; here was a child the same age as he when his life ended.

Here was he, probably about to die from the dozens of tears in his skin – and his first instinct was to promise this child everything he had to offer.

But he wasn’t going back to the arena, he’d rather let the life weep out of him right then and there. The Divines were with him again, showing him what he ought to do with his life, granting him another Master.

 _“I pledge”,_ he repeated.

The child’s brave eyes sparked, from fear of the sudden responsibility, but that fear quickly died away and in its place was a gentle, unyielding light, like the eye of a storm.

_“I accept.”_

\---

**Ogma forced bread into his mouth. Further away, the larger mass of soldiers from the League had assembled to eat, and cheer for the new recruits brave enough to name themselves. Ogma never attended those celebrations. He understood the necessity of it, but it reminded him too much of the arena; the cheers, the violent excitement in the air…**

**No, Ogma kept for himself. Barst, Cord and Bord usually came as company, even though he was more their leader than their friend. Ogma sometimes saw Navarre sulking in the shadows, but that man wouldn’t join him for dinner, rude as he was.**

**Though now, Samto was there. And he really couldn’t chew quietly.**

**Where they friends? Or were they companions brought together by necessity, holding each other in fear as they crossed an unknown ocean? Would Samto had stayed to face the Masters, if Ogma had not – or would he have left them to die as he ran?**

**Humans were ugly creatures, Ogma had learned that very early on; but he had yet to have his friends or companions betray his trust. It was a matter of what he chose to believe – and, with Princess Caeda as a Master, he had chosen to think of those he felt a companion’s bond with as a ‘ _friend_ ’. In fact, the Princess herself insisted that Ogma refer to her as a ‘ _friend_ ’ too, and he’d obey. Ogma was an obedient man; but this time, because he chose to be.**

**So, yes. Samto was a friend; although he nearly hadn’t recognized Ogma when they met on opposing sides of the battlefield.  ‘ _Ogma?’ he’d said. ‘Oh, sorry, you don’t look the same, not with all those— I mean, you look… older…?’_**

**‘ _Just say scars if that’s what you mean_ ’, Ogma had responded. **

**Princess Caeda’s healers couldn’t save both his life and the smoothness of his skin – his scars criss-crossed all over his body with the marks of a whip and they would always remain.**

**He didn’t mind. He was lucky to live. But it was disheartening to see the eyes of some of his allies widen when they recognized the shape of his scars – it wasn’t just from the surprise of seeing a man, alive, with more scars than could be counted, it was _recognition_ , it was _personal_. He hadn’t expected to see such a reaction from the very Princess of Macedon, though if it was from having faced such pain herself, or from being the one to bring that pain, Ogma didn’t know. She was tough to read. He stayed clear of her when he could, just to be sure.**

**Ogma forced another piece of bread into his mouth. Bord was crushing his bread with an intense eye on Samto, as if painting a vivid picture of how the bread was, in fact, Samto’s head. Ogma would do best in breaking the ice, and he nudged Samto with his elbow.**

**“How’s Alfor?”**

**“Oh.” Samto stopped his loud, wet chews, and swallowed. Bord’s muscles no longer cramped around the bread. “Nice of you to ask, buddy. Alfor’s good, I think. I took the mercenary job to give us some money, his stump’s been acting up lately and I just wanted to get him a good healer again since the last one moved. I kinda regret not bringing him, though, since you got good healers here.”**

**Just one. The League had lost some of its most talented healers, to Ogma’s dismay. The two Macedonans had never been anything but nice to him.**

**Well. Part of the mission was to get them back, after all.**

**And the mission came first, always. He would carry out his orders, or die. That was what knights did to their lieges, but Ogma wasn’t a knight. What was he? He was a free man, yet he had a Master. The thought of not having one felt so out of place and odd, his mind unable to be anything but a subordinate. Was this the master's doing, or his own?**

**“Sometimes I wish I’d never been taken away”, Ogma said. It was sudden, and completely unrelated to what Samto had said. Not something he really wanted Barst, Bord or Cord to know either. And yet he spoke. “I wish I had never been taken away, even if it meant never getting to meet Her Highness Caeda, even if it meant never assisting and protecting her as we gather what little hope humanity has left. I sometimes wish I could have lived out this war, alone on the island of my home.”**

**He could tell Samto was surprised. It wasn’t so strange of him to be – he might not have heard Ogma speak so many words at once, ever. Or speak of things so close to his heart.**

**Ogma bent his head. “Does that make me a terrible person?”**

**“Nah”, Samto said, with a little laugh. “I think it makes you normal.”**

**‘ _Normal’_? No, that was never something he’d become. He carried the scars of a past that had shaped him into what he was, and that was far from normal. They didn’t heal, just like the ones on his skin.**

**He was a weapon, a tool for his liege to use. He didn’t know anything else.**

**Then again, maybe that was something a person with a ‘normal’ life did. They chose what liege’s to follow, they chose their own purpose in life. His life had been terrible, filled with unacceptable atrocities, but he was among friends now. And here, he would fight to remain.**

**Was there beauty in this crow’s caws, after all?**

**He wasn’t sure, really. He’d have to listen for a while longer to figure it out.**


End file.
